February 12, 2013

"... into something that’s more palatable to the city’s establishment. The blogger who, in 2008, tweeted, 'fuck tim russert. fuck him with a spiky acid-tipped dick,' now styles himself as the evenhanded, empirically driven adult in a room of squabbling, stubborn children. Even his critique of Washington, grounded in data and charts and graphs, is establishment to the core: This place, he says, is not like it used to be."

That's just a photoshoot misfire that ought to have been deleted instantly. To select it to illustrate the article is practically to announce: This is a hit piece.

I pointed out that, in spite of his loathing of being subjected to the journalistic gaze, he had agreed to be profiled not only by me, but also by New York magazine—simultaneously. The “people above me” he said, “seem to think it’s a good idea.” It would bring in readership, and Klein felt it would be “hypocritical” not to cooperate with the press when he, the press, was constantly asking people to cooperate with him. It was almost too meta to bear. “You’re sitting there taking notes and recording while I’m sitting here taking notes and recording,” he said. “It’s a peculiar situation!”...

Klein later told me that he found our exchange “slightly threatening.”

“Don’t take it personally,” one of Klein’s friends explained. “He didn’t get this far being casual about his image management.”

Oh, good lord, this thing has me sympathizing with Ezra Klein! Ridiculous.

By the way, a pantheon is "a temple dedicated to all the gods." (OED.) The figurative meaning is: "The group of people or things most revered by an individual, nation, profession, etc.; a group of people particularly respected, famous, or otherwise significant in some capacity; a set of things having acknowledged value or importance." It doesn't make sense to talk about "the pantheon of hungry young men." Either they hungry or they are in the pantheon. The ambitious young strivers are not the gods.

What a confusion of ideas! In your opinion, the photo immediately tells the reader that this is a hit piece but it caused you to sympathize with the subject. I merely think overtly ironic photos from the post-baby-boom generation don't register with you.

Limos and her siblings would disagree with your limited understanding of "pantheon." Perhaps you should brush up on your Ovid or Hesiod.

I remember reading Ezra Klein before he was famous, and some of those other now so-called "mainstream" internet media types. I always thought, while reading them in the early days, that they were mental and linguistic lightweights. I was truly surprised at how readily they were hired by the mainstream media to help them usher in the internet era. Their arguments were terrible. They were all ad hominem attacks. No attempt at any sort of intellectual rigor. I lost a lot of respect for the MSM when they hired the likes of Klein and his friends.

There's a section of the early Egyptian Pyramid Texts called (by us) the Cannibal Hymn in which the deceased pharaoh Unas, who is now a god, asserts that he is going to kill and eat all the other gods, except for 2 minor ones, whom he'll keep around to serve as his butcher and cook.

What fluff. The article claims he has a reputation for serious analysis. While that's his branded image it is not true.

In fact his function is to provide the most plausible talking points for lefist policy to underknowledged and overcertain left leaning gadflies. His core competence is understanding how that cohort think and tailoring the leftist positions to fit their preconceptions.

"To select it to illustrate the article is practically to announce: This is a hit piece."

Either that, or they're announcing they hired one of the Washington Post's photo editors ... just about everybody (with the very disappointing exception of President That Guy) gets that treatment on a regular basis ...

I don't think less of Ezra Klein because of his age. I think less of Ezra Klein because of his insipid, naive, fluffy advocacy journalism that is passed off as serious analysis.

That he talks with the President is also not surprising because they share a similar depth of sophomoric understanding about the world. It is as if these guys are still sitting around the dorm room solving the world's problems with ever so earnest theory without the benefit of experience with reality.

"Shape-shifted into something more acceptable" and my mind finished that sentence as "werewolves" ie "Shape-shifted into something more acceptable werewolves". While I looking to see if a group of werewolves was a pantheon of werewolves (which feels wrong) I found this description:

"The first written definition of a werewolf in the English comes from Richard Verstegan‘s A restitution of decayed intelligence: in antiquities (1605) where we see;

The were-wolues are certaine sorcerers, who hauing annoynted their bodyes, with an oyntment which they make by the instinct of the deuil; and putting on a certaine inchanted girdel, do not only vnto the view of othres seems as wolues, but to their own thinking haue both the shape and nature of wolues, so long as they weare the said girdel." This useful blog also points out that Scots differed from the English on the topic: What is a werewolf? According to the Scots in the 1808 An etymological dictionary of the Scottish language, John Jamieson defines a warwolf as “a puny child or an ill-grown person of whatever age; pronounced warwoof.”

Then I looked for antonymn to pantheon and found this: "A building dedicated to atheism (no gods) would be the opposite of a pantheon, a building dedicated to all the gods. ACLU headquarters comes to mind."

For a variety of reasons, technology being a big one, a young 20's progressive blogger and an inexperienced Senator cum progressive President are having a big say in the laws all of us will live under.

Both are manipulating technology very well, and have ridden it into positions of wealth and influence

I was reading David Brooks' "Bobos in Paradise" this past weekend and he admits the pundit class are like Klein is portrayed here. UC, Princeton, blogging, then a WP column. Brooks followed the same career path too, more or less. They produce nothing actual they're simply courtiers for one of the DC factions. Few have ever worked at an actual job in the sense that the rest of us do. They're professional dilettantes who do a few interviews, read a few books, and then go on TV, radio and the print media and prattle on like they're polymathic experts on everything.

Ezra is the pencil necked cunt the 7th grade girls beat the shit out of in junior high. He's the cunt that braces failed to fix his speech impediment. When he appears on MSNBC, he talks like he has a load stuck in his throat. Worse, he is a "the Constitution is worthless" liberal.